Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson When I talk about how well the economy is doing and how wages are increasing, I sometimes have a caller remark that they haven’t seen any improvement in their economic situation. That makes sense. A rising tide will lift all boats, but some boats rise faster than others. But the most recent economic numbers show that economic growth has been most beneficial to low-income workers. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal put some of the economic numbers…

Kerby Anderson Just a few years ago, Evergreen State College was probably best known as the alma mater for rapper Macklemore and Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons. That all changed with an email biology professor Bret Weinstein sent. In the past, the school had a tradition known as the “National Day of Absence.” Usually, minority faculty and students leave the campus for a day to make a statement. But in 2017, the college wanted to change things and wanted white students and…

Kerby Anderson Crime costs both victims and society a great deal. But the cost is much more than we realize. Professor Walter Williams documents the “Unappreciated Crime Costs” that especially hit black residents in low-income neighborhoods. Thousands of black Americans are murdered each year in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis and Philadelphia. He documents that over 90 percent of the time the perpetrator was also black. Crime also imposes a hefty tax on people in these neighborhoods, who…

Kerby Anderson Most all media reports claim that the terrible brush fires in Australia have been made worse by climate change. That may be true in the broadest sense, but the reality is more complicated. Here are a few pieces of data to consider. Climatologist Roy Spencer reminds us that Australia has had a long history of brush fires going all the way back to the Aborigines. The record number of hectares burned on that continent occurred during the 1974-75…

Penna Dexter A California law went into effect January 1 that hurts the very people it was supposed to “protect.” Assembly Bill 5 severely limits independent contracting by placing heavy restrictions on the amount of work freelancers can do before being considered full-time workers. The Daily Signal’s Jarrett Stepman explains that “The law was passed to reduce the negative impact of the ‘gig economy,’ where workers do various jobs on their own time but don’t get the benefits or long-term…

Kerby Anderson Occasionally I use the phrase, “Politics stops at the water’s edge” when talking on radio. I really didn’t know the full history of the phrase until reading an editorial by former Senator Joe Lieberman. After World War II, Senator Arthur Vandenberg (a Michigan Republican who was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee) formed a bipartisan partnership with President Harry Truman. He did so to help secure the postwar peace and strengthen the country’s position in the Cold War….

Kerby Anderson One of the framed pictures in my office is a photograph I took at Glacier National Park when I was a teenager. I have always wanted to go back and photograph this beautiful place with a much better camera. I also wanted to go back so that I could take a picture of the signs that the park service put up predicting that all of the glaciers would be gone by 2020 due to climate change. In case you…

Kerby Anderson Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. When the Supreme Court removed most state restrictions on abortion back in 1973, who could have predicted the world we live in today? When the ruling came down, few understood the long-term implications. I remember speaking on the issue in college classrooms a few years later and wondering when the Supreme Court would reverse its decision. By the 1980s, it seemed like only a matter of time that abortion would…

Kerby Anderson Two weeks ago, it seemed like there might be a major confrontation between the US and Iran. Garrett Graff, writing in Wired, suggested that Twitter may have helped stop a war with Iran. That might be a bit of an overstatement, but it does illustrate how international conflict might be affected by something as simple as social media. He has written about the Cold War and reminds us how difficult communication was between Russia and the US during…

Kerby Anderson On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, let me suggest that you take some time to read his letter from a Birmingham Jail. If you are young, I think it will give you a better idea of what the civil rights movement in the 1960s was all about. If you are older, it will remind you of some forgotten events and chapters in American history. Dr. King wrote the letter in response to a published statement by eight clergymen….

Penna Dexter Some bad ideas just keep coming back. And when they do, they’re often more dangerous than ever. One such proposal was the Equal Rights Amendment, which proponents claimed would protect women’s rights by prohibiting discrimination based on sex. Congress passed this amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1972 and gave it seven years to achieve ratification by three-fourths of the states. Thirty-five states ratified. In a constitutionally questionable move, Congress extended the deadline three more years. Still the amendment…